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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23440717">Commencement</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hth/pseuds/Hth'>Hth</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Pretty Good Universe [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magicians (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Caretaking, Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Romantic Fluff</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 12:42:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,941</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23440717</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hth/pseuds/Hth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years later.  Eliot is going to support his boyfriend at this weird medieval ritual and he doesn't care who he vomits on while he's there.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Pretty Good Universe [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686286</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>202</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Commencement</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On the day before Quentin's hooding ceremony, Eliot eats some leftover rice for brunch and throws up for eight straight hours, in between lying on the bathroom floor and experiencing existential dread. The existential dread thing, to be fair, has been in and out all week, but the food poisoning makes everything infinitely worse.</p><p>He has <em>so much packing</em> left to do.</p><p>“I'm still going tomorrow,” he promises while Quentin sits on the floor with him and tries to get him to eat peanut butter off a spoon between sips of ginger ale through a crazy straw.</p><p>“You're really not, honey,” Quentin says gently. “It's okay, it's not a big deal anyway.”</p><p>“No,” Eliot protests, trying not to feel too much like a dog who's been good at the vet as he licks at the spoon. “Bullshit it's not a big deal, you can't just go by yourself.” Margo's job started two weeks ago; she's been fending for herself and the baby in the new house, which is no small component of Eliot's dread – like, yes, he knows Quentin's step-mother is also there helping out, and also Freya doesn't need that much at this point in her life other than diaper changes and breast milk, so Eliot's organizational skills are better used here, packing everything up and getting ready for Quentin's graduation and the end of Ted's school year next week.</p><p>It's all rational and reasonable and everyone agreed on it, but Eliot's herding instincts are still going <em>berserk</em> with half his family here and half in Baltimore, and he still feels subjectively like he's abandoned the girls, and now Quentin's fine with being abandoned, too? No, absolutely the fuck not, Eliot is <em>going</em> to support his boyfriend at his weird medieval ritual with the ugly robes, and he doesn't care who he vomits on while he's there.</p><p>“It'll really be fine,” Quentin assures him, stroking Eliot's disastrous hair back from his sweaty forehead. “Maybe Ted can still come, we'll just get him an Uber there.” Eliot makes a face, and Quentin chuckles. “I was taking the train by myself when I was eleven. He can really manage getting in a car.”</p><p>“Oh, you were not,” Eliot scoffs.</p><p>“Okay, not by myself, but without adults. Julia and I used to go into the city for book signings and stuff like that when we were kids. You're really a little overprotective of him, you know that, right?”</p><p>In his opinion, Quentin was a little <em>under</em>-supervised, growing up with a father who worked sixty-hour weeks to pay for the American dream in the ritzy parts of New Jersey and a mother who wanted to be doing literally anything else in the world other than child-rearing, but there's no diplomatic way to say <em>that</em>, whether or not Quentin secretly agrees. “Why are you being so mean to me while I'm dying?” Eliot says pitifully, which gets him another pet and a sympathetic noise.</p><p> </p><p>Quentin takes Ted out for dinner so Eliot can go to bed early in peace, but the silence in the apartment just gives Eliot time to think about how little time a week actually is to finish packing up both condos.</p><p>He Skypes Margo to complain about it, and she puts Freya on her lap in front of the camera and lets her coo and try ineffectually to clap her little hands, which is – pretty soothing, yes. But then Margo ruins it by saying, “You know it's just a transition thing, right? You're going somewhere you don't know anyone and you're freaking out, big deal. You'll get over it.”</p><p>“I'm not freaking out,” Eliot says. “I literally have food poisoning, it's not in my <em>head</em>.”</p><p>“You were happy in exactly one place in your whole life, and you're about to leave it forever,” Margo says in that terrifying way she has of just – <em>saying things out loud</em>. “It'll be okay,” she says, less brusquely. “You'll get here and you'll smell the baby's head and you'll remember how much you love the stained glass and you'll feel better. You'll be happy here, too, because you're a happy person now, you big drama queen.”</p><p>“I'm actually, physically ill,” Eliot grumbles. She's not <em>wrong</em> about any of it, but he does think she's discounting the part where he ate bacteria and his body is still trying to purge the invasion, which is also very much affecting his mood.</p><p>He does really love that stained glass transom window over the front door of his new house, though.</p><p>Also his wife and daughter. Obviously.</p><p> </p><p>Margo's new job involves public relations for a real estate development group that's heavily invested in urban renewal, which means she walked into the house-hunting situation with all sorts of unfair advantages, and the sale of the old condo allowed them to put a giant down payment into a ridiculously beautiful Queen Anne-style rowhouse from 1909. The lighting's not great and the kitchen is so small it makes Eliot's heart hurt a tiny bit, but there's a fireplace in the dining room and beautiful wood floors and bannisters and a marble sink in the master bath and all sorts of Art Deco bits and bobs in the trim, and honestly Eliot is deeply, profoundly in love with it.</p><p>Still. The emptier this place gets, almost eight years of Eliot's life vanishing piece by piece into anonymous cardboard boxes, the more he thinks about....</p><p>He'll probably never be back here again. What possible reason will he ever have to visit West Lafayette? The friends they have here are mostly casual; Facebook will do just fine for staying in touch with them. No extended family. Quentin has affection for Purdue and Eliot will always have a soft spot in his heart for the Wellspring, but those are pretty thin reasons to make a trip back once they're settled in Baltimore.</p><p>There's no reason he should even <em>want</em> to, except.</p><p>Eliot became a cat person in this building. He became a father. He took a bottle of wine to a new neighbor and then just kind of never left. He got married here, told lies about Santa Claus here, had a few notable nervous breakdowns here, sang lullabyes and sewed Halloween costumes and quit smoking and hosted Star Wars-themed sleepovers and started an Etsy store and learned shibari and went to therapy, and of course he can be happy in Baltimore, too, but--</p><p>He'll never come back here again, because it'll be someone else's home, not his. He's thirty-one years old and he's leaving something behind, and already Ted's getting so big, and Margo strolled right into a stupidly lucrative corporate job like she was born for it, and Quentin is getting his PhD tomorrow, and deep down Eliot knows that they won't stop leaving things behind now. They're only going to get older, and one by one they'll outgrow the things that meant the world to them in their twenties.</p><p>Eliot's not saying he wants things to stay the same forever. He's not saying that at all. He just doesn't have a lot of experience in saying goodbye like this – in leaving on purpose.</p><p>It's just new to him, that's all.</p><p> </p><p>By Saturday morning Eliot feels a lot better.</p><p>Well, in point of fact he feels like his entire digestive tract has been scrubbed out of him with steel wool and replaced with used shoe leather. But that's an improvement over Friday, actually.</p><p>He eats a tortilla with a few dots of honey and ransacks the cupboards until he finds where Quentin has stashed his herbal teas (behind the baking soda? Where's the organizational logic? What's the <em>theme</em> of this cabinet?) so he can make himself a cup of peppermint tea. It's just like coffee, only terrible. Breakfast only takes him like ten hours to make, so this is fine, it's going great.</p><p>He's going to be at this ceremony at eleven o'clock so help him <em>Satan</em>. He just is. It took Quentin five years to finish this goddamn degree, and that means it took Eliot five years to get here – five years of making endless pots of soup and planning his life around finals schedules, of buying alcohol for Mayakovsky's Christmas present and secretly hoping this'll be the bottle that kills him, of picking Quentin up at the library at two in the morning because he forgot that the buses quit running at twelve-thirty, of fielding phone calls from needy students who think Quentin's their therapist and have no respect for the concept of Date Night, of trying to think of something witty and charming and reassuring to say about a 180-page document called <em>Illustrations of a Realist Methodology for the Philosophy of Mathematics</em> that he's never read and never will read, of holding Quentin in his arms while Quentin cries himself hoarse while Eliot just says over and over again <em>you're not failing, it's just hard, you're doing it, you can do hard things</em> like a litany.</p><p><em>No fucking way</em> Eliot is going to stay home and eat Saltines while Quentin gets up on that stage and accepts their doctorate.</p><p>There's a minute while he's shaving when Eliot thinks he might hurl again, but he gulps down a bunch of tapwater and unfortunately a non-zero amount of shaving cream and the urge passes. He doesn't even slice himself. It's going great.</p><p>He doesn't even bother with Ted, honestly; he can hear video games on the other side of Ted's door, so he knows the kid's awake, and while normally Eliot tries to supervise the kid's grooming skills like a responsible parent-slash-member of the fashion industry, today he just doesn't have it in him. As long as Ted's wearing pants by ten-thirty, everything will be fine. They're skipping town soon anyway.</p><p>And truthfully, Ted's pretty good about getting himself ready in the morning without a lot of micromanaging. It's one of the ways he's kind of stepped up in the post-baby era of their family, which Eliot appreciates very much even if he never says so, which he doesn't because he's kind of a thoughtless dick about stuff like that, and he reminds himself he should really fix that oversight soon. Ted gets so much goddamn affirmation from Quentin and Margo that Eliot kind of lets it slide sometimes, but – that's no excuse.</p><p>“Do you need help with your tie?” Eliot says when Ted finally surfaces from his room, already dressed and ready to go.</p><p>“No,” Ted says, and gives Eliot's outfit an <em>uncannily Margo-like</em> once-over. “Do you?”</p><p>“I will pack you in a crate and mail you to your mother,” Eliot says. “She was always the one who liked you anyway.” Ted just rolls his eyes, because that is also a thing that he does, now that he's a big brother, or maybe just now that he's eleven.</p><p>“Are you still sick?” Ted asks as he watches Eliot shuffle around like a ninety-year-old man.</p><p>Eliot thinks about lying, but it's not like Ted is easily fooled. And that's kind of been working for Eliot as his parenting niche, actually – the one who's as honest with Ted on the little things as the big ones. “Feel like shit, probably not going to actively vomit,” he says shortly. “But the show must go on.”</p><p>“Dad says you have German Protestant midwestern repression issues,” Ted says with just a tad too much innocence. “Is this what he means?”</p><p>“Yes, that's right,” Eliot says sweetly, “I'm sure he's referring to my unfailing sense of dignity, fortitude, and general strength of character.” Then, for just a second (it's probably the bad rice talking) he kind of forgets to be arch and he just says, “We show up when we say we're going to show up for our people. Right?”</p><p>Ted blinks at him a second. “Right,” he says.</p><p>“Okay,” Eliot says, satisfied. Ted's at kind of a rotten age right now, but he's a good kid. He gets it. “Ready? Bring your backpack, in case I'm wrong about the vomiting thing.”</p><p> </p><p>Quentin expressed his disinterest early on in attending the university-wide graduation event, which takes place in the football stadium on Sunday – his exact words were <em>I would rather be dead, </em>which Eliot doesn't take literally, but it's still not something Quentin would say about an ambiguous situation – but he's been quietly pretty excited about the department hooding ceremony. Eliot sees through that <em>it's not a big deal anyway </em>crap; it's a huge deal to Q, who has a deep-seated fondness for ritual and tradition. Eliot suspects it's either the cause or the effect of his love of elves and High Kings and whatever, that fantasy grandeur that feels so much more meaningful to Quentin than the normal world of Chinese food delivery and athleisure wear and emptying the litter box.</p><p>For whatever reason, putting on a flowing robe with velvet trim and a funny hat just hits a sweet spot for Quentin, and as Eliot sits, bored and low-key nauseous, in a campus theater, he finds himself kind of getting into the anticipation of hearing Quentin's name called. It's stupid, Quentin has earned everything he's getting through the work he's already done over the past five years – the work he's done for school and his dissertation and, in Eliot's personal opinion, the work he's done on himself, even if that set his graduation back a little bit time-wise – but Eliot finds himself getting into this fiction where the handing over of a diploma that would've been just as real if they'd mailed it to his new address in Baltimore is somehow the make-or-break moment, an affirmation from the universe that....</p><p>That what? That Quentin deserves this? That he's smart and hard-working and knows an adequate amount about realist methodologies of the philosophy of mathematics?</p><p>That he was right, maybe. That even though Q came to Indiana with literally no one's blessing (except maybe his therapist's), he was right about everything – right not to care about the prestige of slapping Yale on his CV, right to bail on his five-year plan, right to choose his own priorities even if no one else understood them, right to stare his worst fear straight in the eye and change himself to make it untrue.</p><p>Yeah, the credits and the dissertation earned him the piece of paper, but Eliot kind of – gets that this is more. When he hears Quentin's name, when he sees Quentin on stage awkwardly accepting the piece of paper and the handshake, turning around to get the funny satin bib placed around his neck by that drunk asshole who never in all these years stopped referring to Eliot as <em>Alternative Lifestyle</em>, it's – it is more.</p><p>It's a prize that the world has given Quentin for being exactly who he is – a father, a teacher, dogged as all hell, ungodly smart, honest, caring – all of it, all of <em>Quentin</em> went into this quest, and he deserves-- Eliot can't think of any good thing that Quentin doesn't deserve.</p><p>He might be a little biased.</p><p>There's a little reception afterwards with champagne and cupcakes, neither of which Eliot's stomach sends him positive signals about, sadly. Eliot takes a couple pictures of Quentin in his gown with his arm around Ted, for Facebook purposes, before he finally lets himself pull Quentin into his arms. “Hi,” Quentin says breathlessly. “I'm glad you came – I mean, that you're feeling better.”</p><p>“I feel like the second circle of hell,” Eliot admits, brushing Q's forehead with a kiss. “But I've done worse things to my body for stupider reasons.”</p><p>“Well, uh – flattering,” Quentin laughs, his hand seeking out Eliot's waist for no particular reason except the desire to hold on. “Anyway. Thanks.”</p><p>“It was my pleasure, <em>Doctor Coldwater</em>.”</p><p>“Oh god, please don't,” Quentin says with an awkward laugh. Eliot can't figure out for sure if he means it or not, but it doesn't actually matter yet. Quentin's going to have to beg a lot harder than that if he wants to take this simple pleasure away from Eliot. “I don't want to be one of those guys, you know? Who thinks anyone gives a shit about their PhD.”</p><p>That seals Eliot's hunch that Quentin means it less than he thinks he should mean it, so now Eliot's <em>definitely</em> never going to stop. Why the fuck should he? His whole job is to be more convinced of Quentin's general amazingness than Quentin is. “I give a shit,” he says simply.</p><p>Quentin blinks up at him, caught a little off-guard by Eliot just – saying a thing. “I know you do,” he says with that infinite, vulnerable tenderness that Quentin can just kind of call up on command, even in public. “Thank you.”</p><p>He's still teaching Eliot so much about courage, every day.</p><p>They stay at the reception for a little while, obediently saying hello to the people they already know and letting themselves be introduced to strangers they'll never meet again, <em>my partner Eliot, our son Ted </em>– it's mostly boring, but Eliot still stores it all up in that small, warm place he keeps these memories in. The times that Quentin told the world Eliot was his. The way he always says it like it's a point of pride. Every <em>we</em>, every <em>ours</em> – somewhere in his heart, Eliot hangs onto every single one, even now that there's too many to count.</p><p>It doesn't come with a piece of paper or a funny hat, but that's Eliot's prize. Because once he let Margo drag him across the hall to meet their new neighbor, and then he was <em>right</em> never to leave. Eliot was right about what he knew deep in his bones, and he did the right thing when he followed through and never quit, even when it got hard. He was frankly a <em>goddamn genius</em>, and for once in his life the world came through with a reward: every <em>we</em>, every <em>ours</em>. Every day he gets to share with the people he loves.</p><p> </p><p>Eliot tries to convince Quentin that it's still fine to go out for a nice lunch like they planned, even if Eliot can't eat anything himself, but it's no go. They decide to get a bunch of pizza for carry-out and eat at home, where Eliot can supplement his breadsticks with orange juice and turkey slices, and it's a pretty ordinary Saturday, except for the napkins that Quentin balls up and throws at Eliot's head every time he ends a sentence with <em>Dr. Coldwater</em>.</p><p>He's smiling, though. He loves it. Or Eliot, one.</p><p>They call Margo and then they go to a movie and Eliot's feeling well enough to cadge a few Milk Duds from Ted. Okay, quite a few. Ted elbows him and hisses, “Oh my god, get your own!” after the fourth time Eliot reaches for his box.</p><p>“It's two-point-five servings of Milk Duds, you can share,” Eliot hisses back.</p><p>“I need somebody to be an adult right now,” Quentin says, before somebody behind them has the audacity to shush them, and he turns around and says in his most professorial voice, “They are <em>trailers</em>, and they're free on YouTube,” and Eliot has never loved him more.</p><p>When they get home, Ted asks if he can play his online game for a couple of hours before bed. “Don't you think it would be helpful if you used some of that time to pack?” Eliot says, because <em>he is too an adult, so there.</em></p><p>Ted gives him exactly the look that that deserves. “<em>Eliot</em>,” he says.</p><p>“Yeah, yeah,” Eliot says. “Log off at eleven, they're doing that goodbye thing for you and your dad at church tomorrow, right?” Ted nods, already halfway to his room. “Halt!” Eliot says, which Ted does, although with every possible effort to telegraph what an imposition this is on his valuable time. God, adolescence is going to be the worst. He waits until he has Ted's full attention before tossing his cellphone for Ted to catch. “Log off at eleven. Call your dad if you need anything. You remember how to block and report someone?”</p><p>“I remember,” he says with a slight roll of his eyes.</p><p>“Good, block the shit out of whoever you want. Block 'em if they look at you funny. Block 'em if they can't take a joke. Brush your teeth before bed, and – just, be trustworthy, okay?” They've only done this once before, and Eliot is still kind of a riot of Feelings about it, but as Quentin pointed out when they discussed it, the whole floor here is smaller than a lot of people's houses. It's not exactly like Ted's some great distance away.</p><p>“Yeah, okay,” says Ted, who after his initial shock that he was actually being allowed to stay in the condo alone, pretty much came around in three seconds to deciding it was completely routine. “Goodnight. And, hey – congratulations, Dad.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Quentin says, surprise and delight shining through his smile. Ugh, Ted is a really thoughtful kid or whatever. Eliot kind of can't believe he and Margo haven't managed to screw that up yet, but here they are.</p><p>Eliot locks the doorknob and the deadbolt from outside, then tries the doorknob just to be sure. “Hey,” Quentin says gently, touching his arm. “Don't make it a big deal. It's going fine.”</p><p>“I'm not making it a big deal,” Eliot says. “I mean, I don't want to be the shitty step-father who gets his kid confiscated for endangerment or abandonment or whatever, but I think that's a normal-sized deal, that's a very reasonable--”</p><p>“It's so not reasonable,” Quentin laughs softly at him. “Honey, nobody's endangered and nobody wants to take Ted. We're thirty seconds away, and if you want to look in on him later, you can just do that. You're being a little like that because you're tired and you still don't feel great, but he's perfectly fine, and he has your phone if he needs anything. Honestly, I'd only worry if he starts poking around in your phone.”</p><p>Slanderous is what that is. “I'll have you know that he uses my phone all the time, which is why I keep it extremely family-friendly, <em>unlike some people</em>.”</p><p>Quentin grins at him. “Then stop sending me nudes.”</p><p>“Shan't,” Eliot says grandly, and strokes through Quentin's hair when he smiles even deeper.</p><p>He kisses Quentin, and he means it to be a quick kiss, but Quentin grabs hold of his arms immediately and hangs on, so Eliot just stays where he is, one hand in Quentin's hair and one resting on his shoulder, letting the kiss drift downstream in its own sweet time. After a minute Quentin drops back flat-footed with a little sigh and says, “Thank you so much for being there today. I know it was a real effort.”</p><p>“Wouldn't have missed it for the world, <em>Dr. Coldwater</em>,” Eliot says.</p><p>“You seriously have to stop,” Quentin laughs.</p><p>“Shan't,” Eliot murmurs before catching Quentin's lips in one more kiss.</p><p>When Quentin steps away, he takes one of Eliot's hands in between both of his and tugs him gently toward his front door. “So it's my day, right?” he says meaningfully. “Does that mean I can ask you for something I want?”</p><p>Eliot doesn't exactly remember which day it was when Quentin wasn't allowed to ask for something, but he's always willing to play along when Quentin starts feeling a tiny bit bossy. “Anything you want, sweetheart,” he says, pushing down a little bit of uncertainty. The spirit is willing, but the digestive system is still kind of so-so.</p><p>But Quentin smiles at him with such satisfaction and such – god, love, Quentin loves him so much – that Eliot can't argue. He'll do his best for his sweet boy, always.</p><p>The thing about Eliot's sweet boy, however, is that he's ungodly smart, and Eliot really should quit forgetting that. Once Eliot's lured all the way into the bedroom, with soft finger-strokes to his palm and hot, promising eyes, Quentin pauses at the foot of the bed to undo Eliot's tie and kiss his throat. “God, you're beautiful,” he whispers hotly against Eliot's skin, stroking down his sides. “I want you in my bed. Let me take care of you.”</p><p>A little glimmer of the trap he's walked into starts to become visible. “Take care of me?” Eliot says. “Thought it was your day.”</p><p>Quentin just smiles at him and works open the lowest button on his vest. “And you're going to let me have you, right, baby? All of you?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Eliot sighs, even though he's already figured out where this is going. “I'm here. I'm yours.”</p><p>Eliot isn't a person who's good at being sick. He doesn't like being red and sweaty and disheveled. He doesn't like oozing unsexy fluids. He doesn't like depending on other people for his basic needs, and he doesn't like how feeling shitty makes his control on his emotions unravel, so that he can't stop being bitchy when he feels cranky and he can't stop being weepy when he feels alone. It's not a good time.</p><p>Although this time wasn't – terrible. Quentin even got him the cute little crazy straw for his ginger ale, to make it festive.</p><p>It's not the worst, letting himself be taken care of occasionally. Quentin likes to spoil him, so in a way it's kind of win-win?</p><p>Quentin takes his time stripping Eliot down, stroking Eliot's arms and his jaw and his hip, locations that are mostly nonsexual but not unsexy. Eliot's skin buzzes with heat, with the memory of a thousand filthy things that Quentin can do to him, but underneath the buzz there's a – glow, a steady, radiating heat that unwinds Eliot's muscles and soothes his – knots of German Protestant midwestern repression.</p><p>He crawls under the blankets with Quentin, both of them in their underwear, and all he wants to do – no, okay, but all he needs to do is press adoring kisses to Quentin's face, stroking up Quentin's neck to cradle the base of his skull. “I want you to rest,” Quentin murmurs to him, tangling their calves together.</p><p>“Are you tired?” Eliot asks.</p><p>“I'm going to read a little while,” Quentin says.</p><p>Eliot kisses over Quentin's shoulder, settling down against his side. “I'll make it up to you,” he promises. It already feels so good, losing structural cohesion, unraveling into blankets and Quentin's skin.</p><p>“El,” Quentin says with an oddly imploring note in his voice, like he's almost out of ways to say it – and Quentin doesn't do well when he's pressed beyond words. He kisses Eliot's hair and says, low and earnest, “It's everything to me that you let me see you like this. That you let me stay with you even when you feel crappy. You think I don't know what that means?”</p><p>“You are pretty smart,” Eliot allows. “Dr. Coldwater.”</p><p>“That's right, I am,” Quentin says, and kisses that same spot again, right above Eliot's hairline. “You want to tell me about the house again?”</p><p>Eliot closes his eyes and smiles against Quentin's shoulder. “There's a skylight on the third story,” he says, picturing it in his mind. “Over the top of the stairs, over the hallway, like an atrium. We'll put a bookshelf there, and a couple of chairs, between your room and Ted's.”</p><p>“Little table,” Quentin prompts.</p><p>“Yeah, and a little table. You can both read up there and have tea and cookies, under the skylight. There are brass lions on the railings, at the top of the stairs, like the lions at the New York Public Library. It'll be a mini library; quiet pursuits only.”</p><p>“It sounds beautiful,” Quentin murmurs. “Peaceful.”</p><p>Eliot nods. “I'm so fucking proud of you.”</p><p>“I know, baby,” Quentin says.</p><p>“No, I – I mean it. You're so insanely smart, and you worked so hard, and you're so good with your students. Johns Hopkins is so fucking lucky to get you. And – me, too. So am I.”</p><p>“You're not lucky,” Quentin says. “You just – you're pretty smart, too. You could've had anything or anyone you wanted, and I like that you picked me, because we are actually pretty damn good for each other. So, well-done there.”</p><p>Eliot chuckles lightly against his shoulder. It's so validating when people notice he was <em>right</em>. “The dining room has a fireplace. We'll put the piano across from it....”</p><p> </p><p>The sounds of Quentin's phone only half-wakes Eliot, but then Quentin is talking to it, which doesn't seem to suit the vibe of the quiet night darkness. He has to lift his head to check the clock, and it's almost midnight.</p><p>“Okay,” Quentin says, and then he's shining the screen in Eliot's direction. “Not an emergency, don't freak out,” he says quietly.</p><p><em>Don't freak out</em> is never as reassuring as it's meant to be. Eliot grabs the phone and says, “Ted?”</p><p>“I'm not in trouble or anything,” Ted says. “I just wanted to ask you – are we doing anything tomorrow?”</p><p>What the actual-- Eliot rolls onto his back, rubbing his thumb in his eye. “Tomorrow. Uh, there's the – reception at church, you and Q are going to that.”</p><p>“I know, but after that?”</p><p>He called at midnight to-- “I don't know, nothing. Packing,” Eliot says, trying not to sound impatient. “Kiddo, I was asleep, so is this--”</p><p>“I was just thinking if we're not doing anything, could you take me to Terre Haute?”</p><p>“<em>Why</em>?” And why the fuck could this not have been discussed at a civilized--</p><p>“I don't know I was just thinking – before things get too busy, I wanted. I wanted to take flowers. For my mom and Nana.”</p><p>Eliot stares at the dim shadows on the ceiling, thrown by the phone and the nightlight and the clock. <em>My mom</em> has meant Margo for so long that it honestly takes him a second. “Oh,” he says. “Yeah.”</p><p>“Yeah?” Ted repeats.</p><p>Eliot will probably never be back to Indiana again after next week, and Ted-- Well, who knows? Who knows. “Yeah, of course,” Eliot says. “Hey, but – get some sleep, okay? Looking busy tomorrow.”</p><p>“Okay,” he says. “Thanks, Eliot.”</p><p>“Brush your teeth,” Eliot reminds him. He's not sure if Ted hears before he hangs up.</p><p>He hands the phone back to Quentin, who's giving him a look that's hard to read in the low lighting. Quentin's fingers brush back a stray curl from Eliot's forehead as he says with warm mockery, “You're so fucking soft.”</p><p>“Shut up,” Eliot says.</p><p>Quentin burrows down under the blankets, stretched out against Eliot's body from nose to knees. “I love it,” he breathes. “I love you.” Eliot nods once, and lets himself be kissed.</p><p>And it wasn't the plan, Eliot doesn't think, but they sink into the kiss, and into the blankets and the darkness, and they sink into more kisses, and Eliot's stomach is doing pretty well but his dick has a few complaints – not about the pressure of Q's thigh, but definitely about the layers of cloth between them. But Quentin's fixing that problem – clever Quentin – and Eliot gets his hands full of Quentin's ass at the same time that Quentin's hand curls around his cock. Eliot gasps at the slow, deliberate weight of the pad of Quentin's thumb dragging up the underside of his cock, at the heat of his palm and the shivery intimacy of his knuckles rubbing through the hair low on Eliot's groin. Intentionally or not, Eliot's not sure, Quentin bites into his lip, and Eliot's hips buck upward sharply.</p><p><em>I love you</em>, he tries to say into Quentin's mouth, and it vibrates in his throat and his breath, but he can't make shapes with his mouth while they're kissing, so he fists Quentin's hair and yanks it, his other hand scrabbling and scraping against Quentin's hip, pulling him in.</p><p>“What do you want?” Quentin whispers against the corner of his mouth. Eliot shakes his head, not sure he remembers why, but pretty sure he's not supposed to pick, that Quentin – it's Quentin's day – “Can I fuck you? Gorgeous, can I be inside you?”</p><p>“Yes,” Eliot says. “Yes, god, fuck. Fuck me, let me--”</p><p>He can't think, he can't make the words. <em>Fuck me</em> is something he's said so many times, for so many reasons, but all the times before it came from his brain or his balls, it was always either calculation or hedonism, but Quentin. Quentin is different, singular, and now when Eliot says <em>fuck me</em>, it comes from that small, warm treasure chest full of <em>we</em> and <em>ours</em> and <em>us</em>, and he wishes he knew how to say it, how to show Quentin all these changes.</p><p>Words have never really done the trick, and now's no time for music, so all Eliot has left is his body, and he makes the best use of it he can by turning pliant and easy in Quentin's arms, letting the planes of his body shift and melt and mold as Quentin moves him onto his knees, letting Quentin push his legs where he wants them, letting himself gasp and whine into the pillow as he clutches it. He wants to give Quentin – whatever softness it is that Eliot has, whatever little bit of bravery and willingness to trust someone else with his weakness and need.</p><p>Quentin talks the whole time, stroking Eliot's hair and his arm like he's gentling a horse, kissing along Eliot's shoulderblade and saying <em>I love you, El</em> and <em>you're so beautiful</em> and <em>tell me what you need, anything you need</em>. Eliot shifts onto one elbow and catches Quentin's hand with his free hand, pulling it to his mouth and sucking two of Quentin's fingers in deep, just to get across the hint about his <em>needs</em>.</p><p>It takes time for Quentin to work his cock into Eliot, but then really, what's time anyway? It's late, it's dark, it's them. They have each other, they have <em>us</em>, so they have forever.</p><p> </p><p>“How do you feel?” Quentin asks into the back of Eliot's neck as they lie in the dizzy, sticky afterglow, in the dead of night, in an apartment where they fell in love, where they almost don't live anymore.</p><p>Eliot shifts a little, pinning Quentin's arm more tightly under his arm. “Little nauseous,” he admits. “Just a little.”</p><p>“Aw,” Quentin says. “Would food help? You hardly ate today. Water?”</p><p>“I don't know,” Eliot says. “Just – don't go yet.”</p><p>That seems okay with Quentin. He spoons up closer, his nails scoring lightly through Eliot's chest hair. “That was the best day,” he says softly into Eliot's shoulder. “I mean. I'm really sorry you didn't feel well, but. I just had. The best day. I wish the girls could've been here, but other than that it was. I don't know. Everything I could've wanted.”</p><p>Eliot's glad. He's glad because Quentin worked hard and deserves that. He's glad because he loves Quentin beyond all reason, and he wouldn't care if Quentin found the damn degree in the bottom of a cereal box, as long as it made him happy, as long as it gave him one practically perfect day. He covers Quentin's hand with his own, over his chest, and locks their fingers together. “There's a porch door off the dining room,” he says dreamily, floating in the darkness. “I want to put planters on each side of the steps out back. I want to grow flowers, we can put them on the piano. On the tea table on the third floor.”</p><p>“Oh, that would be nice,” Quentin breathes, and together they're drifting away from this beautiful place where they were so happy, and together they're heading for the next thing.</p>
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